janecarnall

The Pieces: Dana

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:48:54 GMT

This is part 3 of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1, Part 2). Hooray, I have parts 4 and 5 also written, which will be posted Thursday and Friday, and hopefully I can get 6 and 7 written by the weekend.

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is planned but not yet written.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 3: Dana

Dana visited Melissa and her partner and their children every Sunday. She always had – Sunday afternoons were always time for family visits – and Gerard had agreed it would look more suspicious to discontinue. By agreement, Melissa didn’t talk about her friendship network, and Dana didn’t talk about what she was supposed to do at work.

By next Sunday, it would all be over. Even if they talked about it.

“Sam, can I talk to you?”

Gerard looked up from his computer screen. He shrugged, wordlessly, and pointed to the chair in front of his desk. After a couple of minutes, his fingers stopped moving on the keyboard: he tapped twice, probably shutting a file down or saving it, and turned his own chair a little, leaning back and folding his hands across his stomach. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and nor did Dana, though she thought that she had what she wanted to say summarised.

“Coffee?” Sam asked, after a moment. If she said yes, that would put off the question for at least fifteen minutes.

Dana met Sam’s eyes and kept her voice completely level. “Adam still thinks Devlin-Macgregor will begin decimation tomorrow, or at best the day after. He thinks it will take them three days to finish them all off. I want to tell Melissa about it – about Commerce ordering a decimation at that site, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Gerard was frowning. He grinned, a distortion of his face. “That’s all?”

“Yes, Sam.” Dana kept her eyes fixed on Sam’s face. “I think Melissa may know someone who works there. Maybe more than one. They do have free employees.” She thought Melissa might even know some of the slaves of the company’s free employees, but she wouldn’t say that to Gerard.

“Anyone who tried to stop it would get killed, if they were lucky. Get turned over to Commerce, if not.”

“Not stop it,” Dana said. She had been thinking of this, only of this, for nearly twenty-four hours. “Record it. Witness it. Melissa says – people think about personal slaves first, factory slaves last. But two thousand people - if there were photos of that circulating on the Internet – If people had to see it – ”

“You’re hopeful,” Gerard said, and laughed – an abrupt, entirely humourless crack of sound.

“This is legal, what they’re doing,” Dana said. She made it half a question, by her tone, and Gerard nodded.

“Decimation is legal with Commerce approval. But if you’re thinking that means they think they’ve got nothing to hide, this is Commerce, they always have stuff to hide. And Devlin-MacGregor aren’t exactly the most wide-open company on earth.”

“Yes. The only people meant to know about this while it’s happening are their slaves. I think my sister could change that.”

Gerard stood up, and turned his back on her. He was standing by the window. He put his hand up against the glass, and seemed to be leaning against the window, looking out at something. Not looking at her. “If Commerce found out one of my kids had leaked their plans to the abolitionists, they’d want me to take action. And I couldn’t tell them I’d approved it. Even if I had.”

He turned around. Against the light from the window, his face was hard to see. “Do you understand what that means, Dana?”

“You’d send me out on the next foreign delivery,” Dana told him. She had thought about this.

“If I could,” Gerard said. His voice was expressionless. “If I couldn’t – ” The light outlined him, made him difficult to look at. He had stopped speaking mid-sentence. When he went on, his voice had changed, become colder. “You know what Commerce would do to you. And Melissa.”

“Melissa wouldn’t have to do anything illegal.”

“Do you imagine that would stop Commerce?” Gerard’s shadow against the window shook his head slowly. “Do you really think they couldn’t take Melissa, if they wanted to?”

Dana had more confidence in Melissa’s ability to position herself just on the right side of the law, and pull strings with the politicians and pundits who read her blog, but Melissa wouldn’t have wanted her to talk about that to Gerard. Melissa got emails directly from the senior Senator for Illinois, who passed as a moderate Laborite.

“I think Melissa can get away with it. Even if Commerce finds out it was her.”

Gerard sat down behind his desk again, his face impassive. “But you can’t,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “You would be guilty of leaking secure information. Commerce would want you questioned. If you had gone behind my back and leaked information that I considered a serious threat to our security, the very best you could hope for would be that I would be angry enough to kill you right away.” Gerard’s voice was without emotion, as neutral and tired as his face. “And that’s what I would have to tell Commerce I had done. You would no longer exist.” He stopped, and considered Dana in silence for what felt like a long time. “That isn’t a risk I find acceptable, Dana.”

“But it’s my risk,” Dana said.

“To accomplish what?” Gerard shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Dana said, after a moment. She had a complex array of reasons, and had meant to go through them all – from the value of direct images to convey a message, to the relatively small risk to her of being discovered by Commerce. She didn’t think those reasons would impress Gerard now. “But if we don’t do anything, those two thousand people are dying for nothing. At least we can try to have them remembered. If the abolitionists find out someone carried out the punishment, maybe they can get the law taken off the books. If we do something. If we don’t do anything, nothing happens. Except two thousand people get killed.”

Gerard shrugged. Again, he sat still in silence, looking at Dana. Finally, he said “Okay.”

“You’re going to let me do it?”

“No,” Gerard said. “I’m going to think about it.”

“I need to tell Melissa tonight – if I’m going to.”

“I’ll give you my decision before you leave tonight.” After a beat, Gerard added “I won’t keep you here so late you don’t get to leave. Now get out of here.”

Willow was in the clinic when Dana got back to it. She was carrying her notebook and her laptop, and she looked appalling: white and wrung out. Better than last night.

“How are you?” Dana asked.

“I’m fine,” Willow said. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Dana nodded. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“I need to set up my notebook,” Willow said.

“For this?” Dana sat down. She couldn’t tell Willow about Melissa and her networks: that was on a need to know basis. She certainly couldn’t tell Willow what she and Gerard had talked about: if Gerard said no, Dana wasn’t sure what she was going to do. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to talk to me about?”

“Richard,” Willow said, unexpectedly. “Gerard asked me to find out why people want to buy him, and I interrogated him this morning – ”

“You what?” Dana stared, it hardly seemed to sink in. “You interrogated Richard? Does Gerard know? What – Willow, what did you do?”

“Gerard asked me to,” Willow said. She looked bewildered. “I just asked him questions.”

“Where?”

“In the kitchen. Ray was there. Only s-some of the things Richard said – I wanted to set up the notebook, I’ve got a recording and a transcript – Dana, what’s wrong?”

Dana laughed. It wasn’t funny. “It’s okay. What do you want to show me?”

The transcript was simply of conversation – questions and answers, though Willow had begun with an array of all the textbook questions for starting an interrogation.

“Who is Sykes?” Dana asked, reading the transcript.

“There’s a Frederick Sykes on the amputees list,” Willow said. “Richard called him on Thursday and looked him up on Facebook. He’s on the Chicago network. He doesn’t have any connection with Chicago Memorial or Cook County – he doesn’t list his employer but he’s not on the hospital websites. Richard tried to page a Doctor Ferguson on Sunday, but he thinks he was trying to page a Doctor Lentz. I looked up the liver samples on the page Richard was looking at Wednesday, and they were all signed in by Dr A. Lentz, but he isn’t on the hospital website as a current employee. Richard says there’s something wrong with the liver samples, but I don’t see anything wrong with them. Except a lot of them were signed in on the same day, but that was months after Richard was arrested,” Willow added.

“What are you asking me?”

“Can you see what Richard thought was wrong with the liver samples?”

Dana glanced at the clock on the notebook screen. “What do you think this has to do with buying Richard?”

Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. But look, Dana, Richard says he talked to Chuck Nichols on Thursday about Lentz and Sykes and these samples. And right after that, Doctor Nichols tried to buy Richard. RDU90 means a drug that was being tested, doesn’t it?” Willow hardly waited for Dana’s nod. “Maybe this was a research project that Lentz and Richard were working on and Nichols wanted to buy Richard to keep on with the project? And then when he couldn’t get Sam to sell, he asked Devlin-Macgregor to help? They funded the research for RDU90.” She came to a halt and looked at Dana. “Or, you know… maybe Richard’s just crazy. I mean, he is crazy, Sam warned me, but I mean really crazy, seeing something wrong when there’s nothing to do with these samples at all. I couldn’t see anything.”

Dana looked at the clock again. “Okay,” she said finally. “If I can figure it out in half an hour. If I can’t, I’ve got too much to do. I want to leave on time today. Can you hack me on to their website? It’ll save time.”

“Sure.” Willow opened up her laptop. “I’ll find Doctor Lentz.”

The samples were standard, taken from patients who had been given RDU90. Often recorded as having been taken by a surgeon, usually Doctor R. D. Kimble, during an operation. Signed into the database by a Doctor A. Lentz. All the liver samples were healthy. Willow was right that a whole lot of them had been signed into the database on one day, far too many for good practice, but Lentz had probably been the kind of doctor who put off his routine admnistrative work and did it in one rush. There were too many samples to look at all of them: Dana picked out a dozen at random and conscientiously looked at each one at the highest possible magnification. Richard last Thursday hadn’t had any better access.

There was nothing to see. Dana pulled up two dozen more, and looked at them more rapidly, trying to see something that Richard could have spotted, even something completely insane.

Willow made a noise of disappointment. “I found Lentz. He’s dead.”

“Oh,” Dana said. She was disappointed herself: she would have liked to send Willow away with more help than just a negative. Sam evidently wanted Willow to have an easy job to do this week, and Dana agreed she needed one. “How did he die?”

“Vehicular homicide,” Willow said, with just a ghost of her juvenile amusement in the law enforcement jargon. “Over four years ago.”

Dana looked at the date of the sample she was examining, and her heart missed a beat.

“What date?” she asked.

“August first,” Willow said.

“That’s the date on these samples,” Dana said. “And Willow… I think I know what Richard saw. These are all samples of a healthy liver. The same healthy liver.” She pulled up four of them, side by side. Seen like this, even at low magnification, it was so clear she couldn’t believe she’d missed it before.

“What happened to RDU90? What name was it patented under? What time of day did Lentz get hit by the car?”

Willow was looking at the screen. “The report doesn’t say,” she said. “He was walking to his regular tennis match. Richard thinks Lentz falsified his data. But he didn’t, did he?”

Dana waved that aside. “He may have. But someone else did, too.”

“Are all of those really from the same liver?”

“Yes,” Dana said. “That’s what Richard must have seen – what he told Doctor Nichols. Willow, can you find out what happened to RDU90 without anyone knowing you were looking?”

“Of course,” Willow said. She looked briefly very happy and pleased with herself, and Dana thought she deserved it. It took her about five minutes.

“It went up for sale as Provasic,” Willow said finally. “Reduces arterial plaque. But a new version was approved by the FDA last year, because…” She stopped. “The original patent turned out to cause liver damage in some elderly patients. Dana, the only name that’s the same on the original patent and the new patent is Doctor Charles Nichols.”

tbc tomorrow

The Pieces: Ray

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:52:14 GMT

This is part 2 of a 7-part sequence. (Part 1). Part 3 is written and will be posted when I'm done with Part 4....

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is planned but not yet written.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 2: Ray

Ray

It was odd how everything could still look the same. Even after they knew. The Devlin-MacGregor site was out on the east side. People died there every day, in the ordinary way of business, he and Benny had more cause to know than most.

Ray counted faces for a while. But two thousand. He could not get up that far. How were they planning to dispose of the bodies? The practical problems made him feel sick; counting faces gave him a headache at the back of his skull that no aspirin would touch. He hardly wanted to let go of Benny.

This morning, Giles was interrogating the four girls – the two runaways, the two silly rich kids who'd helped them. Adam was working with George on the numbers for the next set of arrests. Dana was over in the clinic working up a death report for each subject. Benton was assigned to Giles, and Ray to do the arrest records – in the kitchen, where Willow was going to be interrogating ... “Richard?”

“I had a second offer for him,” Sam said.

Once Sam had explained what he wanted, though it still sounded like a way to give Willow a few days off without admitting that she needed it, Ray mostly felt guilty that he was getting a light day in the kitchen catching up with routine paperwork while Benny got to stand in silence looking menacing as Giles got some scared kids to talk.

“Another thing,” Sam said. “Richard needs maintenance access to some kind of exercise routine. Would you two be okay, locking down the armoury, escorting him there and back for supervised exercise? It's okay to say no,” he added – which was the nearest Sam would ever come to admitting he was asking a personal favour.

Benny glanced at Ray: his face was handsomely unreadable, but Ray knew damn well what he'd think – and what he'd say, later – if Ray said no. Save time to give in now. “Sure, okay, Sam. If you're sure about putting him next to the armoury,” he added as a dig.

Sam grimaced. “If it's all locked down before Richard gets into the gym, and he can't get anywhere on the other side but the gym, it should all be fine. I'll work out a schedule. Thanks,” he added, in a constrained voice.

Ray shrugged, uncomfortable. “Richard’s in the holiding cell?”

“Yes, he is. Willow’s in the kitchen.” Sam turned away. “You need me, I’ll be working in the office.”

He and Benny stood and looked at each other. I don’t want to let go of you. As if in answer, if Ray had said it out loud, Benny put his hand on Ray’s shoulder. He gripped briefly, before his arm fell to his side again. “I’ll see you at lunchtime, Ray.”

They turned away from each other at the same time; Ray went into the kitchen, hearing Benny walk away down the hall. Ray still felt like shit. But Willow looked as if she had been flattened out. She was sitting at the other side of the kitchen table, notebook in front of her, looking more like a piece of scrumpled paper than a federal interrogator.

Are you all right? Ray thought of asking, and thought better of it. Devlin-Macgregor would begin the slaughter of two thousand people tomorrow because of a report Willow wrote, of course she wasn’t all right.

“I’ll go get Richard,” Ray said. “You okay to start when we get back?”

Willow nodded.

Richard didn't look much better than Willow did, actually, but Ray didn't give a damn about him. It was odd: Richard had never looked anything but completely subdued to Ray, a wife-killer beaten down to his knees, and while Ray accepted as gospel the report George had put together tracking Richard’s exploits with other people’s phones and laptops, it was damn near impossible to reconcile that with the obedient, cooperative ex-arena slave.

Richard got to his feet obediently, and walked down the stairs ahead of Ray. In the kitchen, Ray put Richard in the chair that had its back to the door, and sat down in the chair at the far end, nearest the door to the utility room. He put his own laptop on the table, opened it up, and began the routine work on the arrest records, half his attention on Willow and Richard.

Although Willow was listed as an interrogator, she'd never to Ray's knowledge actually done an interrogation before. And this was taking place across a kitchen table, and Willow's voice sounded at times more shaky than Richard's. But Willow's first groundwork questions were textbook.

Literally. “Favourite colour?” Willow asked.

Ray glanced up, interested to see how Richard would react. He was looking at Willow with an expression that said, clear as print, Oh you're kidding me.

“Blue,” Richard said.

“Okay,” Willow said. She looked disconcerted, but Ray supposed he wasn't here to protect Willow from how Richard might look at her. “Whose login did you use at the Chicago Hope website?”

“Kath's,” Richard said.

Willow hardly glanced down at her notes. “That would be Doctor Kathy Wahlund. How did you get her password?”

“Kathy cycles through three or four passwords. She always has. I got the password she was using last week on the third try.”

“Which laptop were you using when you tried the passwords that didn't work?”

“Yours, I think,” Richard said. He sounded almost easy with all this, but there was the tell-tale pause between one word and the next, an odd distancing – Benny had first pointed it out to Ray, but it was unmistakable once he'd heard it.

“What did you do when you got access to Chicago Hope?”

“I used Kath's e-mail to set up a guest account for Cooks.” Richard paused. “That's Cook County Hospital. I checked her schedule. I did it when she was teaching a practical. I deleted all the e-mails. Kath had no way to find out what I'd done.”

“Doctor Wahlund was aware you were using her e-mail account?”

“No,” Richard said. “I didn't tell her. I wasn't in contact with her. I haven't spoken to her.”

“But she would have noticed the e-mails you sent from her account.”

“I deleted them,” Richard said. “And deleted them again from the trash folder. They would have been recoverable from the server, but she had no reason to look for them.”

“You would have left a record on her browser,” Willow said. She sounded casually interested. “Activity in her account when she wasn’t there. How do you know she didn’t follow that up?”

“I deleted the browser records,” Richard said. “I don’t know how to delete the record of a deletion, but I didn’t think Kath would notice that. I haven’t been in contact with her.”

“You tried to page her from here on Sunday afternoon,” Willow said.

Richard’s head moved backwards sharply. Ray caught the movement in his peripheral vision, and looked up. That reaction had looked like Willow had hit Richard, but she hadn’t.

Richard said without a pause, “I didn’t page her.”

“I have the record of the numbers you tried to use in the locked pager Sam gave you. One of them is Doctor Wahlund’s.”

“I couldn’t get through. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through. I already tried to page Chuck. I didn’t page her,” Richard said. He was still speaking without a pause, and Ray hoped Willow had noticed. Richard was out of control; this was a good set of questions.

“Doctor Charles Nichols,” Willow said. “You tried to page him?”

“Yes. Didn’t work.”

“You’d already spoken to him on the phone.”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you speak to him?”

“Just the once.” Richard was breathing faster than normal, and shifting in his chair, not sitting still.

“You called the number for Doctor Nichols twice.”

“Yes. I tried to call him on Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday,” he added, after a moment. “I got his voicemail. I hung up. I didn’t speak to him on Tuesday.”

“You also tried to page someone else.”

“Doctor Alec Lentz,” Richard said.

Willow glanced down at her notes. It was a slip in the rapport, but it was her first. She looked up and shook her head. “Is that who you intended to call?”

“I paged him. He’s in pathology. He has one of those easy numbers, 4114. I knew I wouldn’t get through on the pager, it was locked. I was just trying all the numbers I could remember. I didn’t expect any of them to work.”

“Why did you try those three numbers in particular?”

“I knew them.” Richard was shifting in his seat again. His voice sounded uneven. “I didn’t speak to Lentz. I haven’t spoken to him. I talked about him to Chuck. I didn’t speak to him myself.”

“When did you talk about Doctor Lentz?” Willow’s tone of voice was good. Just a little curious.

Ray glanced up from his screen. Richard had that Oh you’re kidding me expression on his face again, but masked by eagerness; he was leaning forward, as if he wanted to be questioned. His hands were no longer out of sight, but resting flat on the table, clenched into fists. Ray shifted in his seat, his full attention on Richard: out of control was good for answering questions, but this was beginning to make Ray uneasy.

“When I called Chuck.” Richard took a breath. “On Thursday. I’d used Kath’s access on your laptop to look at some liver samples at Chicago Memorial Wednesday night.”

Willow nodded.

“They were samples I’d sent Lentz five years ago. For a drug he was testing. I didn’t think the drug worked. But the samples stored online looked wrong. I told Chuck about them. I told Chuck about Lentz. And Sykes.”

Willow glanced down at her notes again. Her fingers moved, evidently paging down. She looked up, clearly bewildered.

Richard was really leaning forward now, angled against the table. Willow leaned back against her chair, folding her arms. She looked as if she were trying not to look intimidated. “Lentz falsified his data,” Richard said. “He was one of the patentholders for RDU90. I told Chuck about it. Sam said you know everything I looked at, everything I did, so you know everything I know. You know about Lentz. You know about Sykes. And Chuck Nichols knows it all too.”

Willow glanced down at her notes, up again. The interview had gone out of control: Ray wondered if she had the sense to know it and close it, or if he would have to get up and do it for her.

“I didn’t kill my wife,” Richard said, not loudly, but with such intensity that it resonated through the room.

After a moment, Willow stood up. Her voice sounded quite calm, and only a little uncertain, but she was still hugging herself. “All right. This interview’s over. Ray, would you take Richard back to the holding cell? I need to work on my stuff.” She scooped up her notebook, backed off, edged away round the table, got to the door –

- Richard was already slumping forward. He had gone, in the space of thirty seconds, from someone who looked as if he might leap to his feet and attack, to the beaten slave Ray had dismissed earlier. He folded his arms and put his head down, not moving even when he must have heard Ray standing behind him. Sam had said Richard was insane.

“On your feet,” Ray said.

After a moment, Richard obeyed. He was taller than Ray, but he stood slump-shouldered, his face blank and passive. He didn’t look like someone who needed to be put in cuffs.

“You going to give me any trouble?”

After a long moment, Richard shook his head. He swallowed. “Do you think I could have some water?”

There was the tap by the commode in the cell, but come to that, even if he was crazy, Ray supposed he wouldn’t have wanted to drink out of that either.

“Sit down,” Ray said.

Just as obediently, Richard sat. Ray filled a cup with water and gave it to him. He watched as Richard drank it. Insanity explained those switch-back changes. It might even, if you wanted to make a case for it, say something about why the scumbag had killed his wife when he couldn’t have hoped to get away with it.

No.

tbc

The Pieces: Willow

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:34:59 GMT

This is part 1 of a 7-part sequence following on immediately from the last part of The Gambler. Part 2 is written and will be posted when I'm done with Part 3, as usual....

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), and The Gambler (seven parts). The whole series will terminate with the next sequence, "End Game", which is planned but not yet written.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Sorry for the long gap - partly Yuletide, partly family stuff, partly computer woes, partly a nasty cold that Santa gave me for Christmas. (He's a git, by the way.) I want to thank Dusk Peterson, whose lovely and thoughtful review of my Keptverse series to date really gave me the emotional kickstart I needed to sit down and finish part 2, despite all difficulties.

Part 1: Willow

Crying gave Willow a headache. Waking up with a headache and a sore feeling in her mouth and throat was like waking up after crying herself to sleep. Except she had not cried.

Two thousand people were going to die. Willow sat up, pushing her thumbs against her forehead. She was in one of the guest bedrooms at Gerard’s house. Giles was sitting up in the chair, or rather, slumped in it, asleep.

Two thousand people were going to be killed. Willow had sat with Adam at the kitchen table, and seen a network of connections across that whole company, branching out from site to site, workteam to workteam. She’d made it up. She’d seen it, looking at their files. But they’d believed her.

Two thousand people. If it was Tuesday already, they were all going to be dead by Friday.

Giles was still asleep. Willow got up quietly and washed her face. She wanted to talk to Sam. She had no idea what time it was. Late: the house was quiet. The door to Gerard’s room stood open: so he wasn’t in bed yet. Willow went downstairs. The kitchen door was open, and the light was on: Richard was sitting with his back to the door, and Sam facing the door. He saw her, and stood up. Richard didn’t seem to stir: Sam added, to him, “Don’t move, Richard.”

“How are you?” Sam looked tired, leaning against the wall beside her. He spoke quietly. His accent was thick with Texas (Heyareya?) that came out slurred over the words like cream.

“I’m fine.”

“Good,” Sam said. “You hungry? Want something to eat?”

“No,” Willow said. Her stomach lurched. “Yes. But. Sam, what I did – ”

“Shut up, Will.” She might only have imagined him calling her bambina, but his face looked as grim as she remembered looming above hers as she half-lay against the bathroom wall. “We are not gonna talk about that tonight. You don’t have to do it again. Get in there and sit down.”

“With Richard – ?”

Sam looked at her a moment, considering her. “Willow, how much does Richard bother you?”

“Not really,” Willow said. Sam went on looking at her. He looked grey and tired, but his eyes on her were intent. “Well, he’s sort of creepy. You know.”

Sam smiled, tight-lipped, without warmth. “No. Has he ever said or done anything that in any way made you uncomfortable?”

Willow hesitated. But – “No,” she said. Sam went on looking at her. “He’s so quiet. And he – ” She glanced through the kitchen door: Richard was sitting slumped against the table, his head down, shoulders bowed. It looked uncomfortably like someone having a cry, but Richard was silent. He was probably just asleep. There were things Richard did that made her uncomfortable, and this was one of them, but she understood what Sam meant. “No, he’s never done anything. And he never says anything.”

“I got a email offering to buy him today,” Sam said. “Different offer from last time. Lot of money. When I got something and someone else wants it and I don’t know why they want it, that just weirds me out, so you want to help me find out why everybody wants Doctor Richard Kimble?”

There was a mound of data from sixty-three Commerce reports that Willow had just begun to process. She’d lost all of today. There would be twice as much to do tomorrow. And if it wasn’t her imagination, Richard had twitched when Gerard said his old name. Could he hear them?

“Can he hear us?”

“Maybe,” Sam said “He’s kind of out of it right now.”

“I… when do you need to know?”

“I don’t know if I need to know,” Sam said. “It just gripes me not knowing. I gave everything you were working on this morning to George, and everything else to Adam, so you’ve got nothing to do now till we get the next set of files from those bastards. Friday or Monday.”

“I don’t – ” Willow was full of an awful relief, like cutting a math class and discovering later that the math teacher had been killed the previous night so the class had been cancelled anyway. “But I should – ”

“You’ve got nothing to do unless you want to help out with this Richard thing. Come on, you need food, you need to eat something.” Sam straightened himself. “Come on in and sit down.”

There was soup and bread. Richard lifted his head and began to spoon soup from the bowl when Willow sat down across from him: or rather, when Sam put a hand on his shoulder and leaned over him. Sam didn’t say anything: he just reached for his own bowl, which was empty now. Richard didn’t look up from his bowl: his face, though a grown man’s, looked in some ways empty as a child’s. Except he didn’t look lik a child. It was creepy, his silence, his lack of expression, and his downcast eyes.

“Here you go,” Sam said. The soup was canned chicken, anodyne on Willow’s throat, not the usual spice-hot brew Sam cooked up at weekends. Sam had cut two thick slices of bread, a different loaf from the one Sam had fed her bits off this morning.

Sam sat down – a chair where he could watch both Willow and Richard, Willow noticed – and leaned his chin on his fist. “That soup okay, Richard?” He sounded friendly.

Richard stopped eating. He looked at Sam – briefly, not changing his expression. “It’s good, Sam.”

“Good,” Sam said. “If it’s cold, I can zap it in the microwave.” There was something wrong with his tone of voice: he wasn’t just being friendly.

Richard said, again, in the same tone of voice “It’s good, Sam, Thank you.”

“That’s okay,” Sam said. Willow was sure of it: Sam’s voice sounded right, sort of, but it was all wrong. She went on eating the soup in her bowl. Richard’s eyes were down, and his hand moved, mechanically, soup to mouth. He didn’t look as if he wanted to eat. Sam didn’t speak again: he looked tired.

The soup was good. Willow finished it, and was eating the second piece of bread, when the door – right behind Richard’s chair – opened. Richard dropped his spoon. Sam was on his feet.

Willow looked up: Giles had woken up. He was standing in the doorway, looking more than a little dazed. Willow smiled at him, trying to look apologetic.

After a moment, Giles gave his glasses a rub, and slid them back on. “Hello,” he said.

Sam sat down again. “Hey, how are you? Want some chicken soup? I think I got another can.”

Giles appeared to give that momentary thought. “No, thank you. Willow, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Willow said, and yawned unexpectedly. “I just… woke up.”

Sam looked at Willow. “Well, you should go back to bed. Richard and I are about to.”

There was still some chicken soup left in Richard’s bowl, but he hadn’t moved since Giles opened the door. Willow stood up quickly and picked up Richard’s bowl and her own, scooping up Richard’s fallen spoon. “Okay,” she said.

Richard lifted his head for the first time and looked at her. Sam’s eyes flicked at her, and for an instant he was frowning. Willow gave an apologetic shrug, and went to the sink: she rinsed out both bowls.

“Willow,” Sam said.

“Yes, Sam.”

“You willing to do that job I asked you to do?”

“I thought,” Giles said – he sounded terribly mild, but not at all sleepy “ – that you’d given Willow the week off?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It’s only Richard I want Willow for, it’s not a big deal.”

Giles looked at Sam over his glasses. Willow had never seen him do that to Sam Gerard before. “Would you care to clarify that.”

Richard was sitting completely still. Willow didn’t like the look on his face.

Sam sat back, folding his hands together over his stomach. “Willow, you okay with doing what I asked you to do?”

Willow felt like she wanted to flail. She couldn’t. “Yes,” she said.

“Okay. Richard, Willow’s one of my interrogators, she’s going to begin investigation tomorrow. Don’t panic – ” though Richard hadn’t moved or blinked “ – we’re going to keep it on this side of the house. But you’re gonna cooperate with her, got it?”

There was a pause. Richard’s hands slid off the table, out of sight, into his lap: his elbows and his shoulders seemed to tuck themselves inward, as if he were flinching, becoming smaller. He bowed his head and said, to the table. “Yes, Sam.”

“I see,” Giles said, after a moment. “Well. Good night.” He glanced at Willow.

Willow came round the table, avoiding both Richard and Sam, and caught hold of Giles’ wrist: he felt solid and comforting through the fabric of his shirt. Sam nodded to them both. Richard was still sitting, hunched and still, not moving.

Willow let go of Giles when they were in the hall and the kitchen door was closed: Giles said nothing until they had reached the top of the stairs, and then only, “One of his interrogators?”

“Well,” Willow said, uncomfortably conscious that this description fitted Giles far better than it did her, “I think maybe he just wanted to scare Richard.”

She’d spoken without thinking, but knew at once – not only from the way Giles sucked in a long breath and let it out again – that this was why. “I’m just – going to find out why people want to buy Richard off Sam.”

“Yes, well,” Giles said, and then, “If you are going to be spending any time with Richard at all, I had rather he was thoroughly scared. In fact, I think cowed is the right word.”

Richard was scared of Sam. Of course he was. Willow went on to the guest room. That wasn’t exactly news. She wanted to be in the guest room with the door shut and a pillow over her head before she heard Sam and Richard coming upstairs. She could deal with the idea of Richard frightened: and she knew – everyone did – that people had bodyslaves they used for sex. But the bodyslaves she had seen had all seemed to make their service something elegant and clean, delicate and luxurious – not a real man with a real and solid body, who was really going to be raped. Not long from now, in a bedrooom just down the hall.

“Are you all right?” Giles asked. Willow had waited till he was inside and shut the door very firmly.

“I’m just going to brush my teeth,” Willow said.

“Wait,” Giles said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you really all right?”

“No,” Willow said. She looked up at him. “Are you?”

Whenever they had to share a bed, they just kicked their shoes off and lay down on the coverlet and each took a blanket. It wasn’t even really embarrassing any more: they’d done it so often in so many motels, before they got to Illinois. You could say almost anything to Giles, but when they were lying down next to each other on a double bed, even a big one, even when they were both dressed, Willow did not want to talk about how she was thinking, in an awkward kind of way, about Sam and Richard. About Sam raping Richard. Somehow it was just as embarrassing to think of Sam as a rapist as it was to think of Richard beinhttp://www.journalfen.net/update.bmlg raped. More so.

“Sleep well,” Giles said. It was after one in the morning. He switched the light out on his side of the bed, and after a moment, Willow did the same on hers. Giles had asked if she was all right because two thousand people are going to die. Willow lay still in the semi-darkness. She had forgotten. How could you forget something like that, even for a moment?

She thought she would not be able to go to sleep. It seemed to her that she spent a long time staring at the shadows on the wall, listening to Giles breathe beside her. But she must have gone to sleep quite fast, because she could not remember hearing Sam or Richard at all, once she and Giles were upstairs.

tbc

The Gambler - Part Seven

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:09:24 GMT

This is the last part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part, fifth part, sixth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse.

Part Seven

Richard’s head was heavy against his shoulder, and he was almost completely relaxed, his breathing even. It seemed that after a while, staying tense was too much of a fight for him. Gerard’s back was cramping up and his butt hurt, and this wasn’t getting him anywhere.

It was possible to open the door of the holding cell from the inside: but Gerard called George to let him out, and they went downstairs, leaving Richard locked in, and Gerard told them. He supposed he would also have to tell Dana, Benton, and Ray: but even after half an hour holding Richard, he had no better thought of how to tell his kids what had happened but simply to break the news as swiftly as he could.

Adam was the only one whose face did not change at all, though probably no one but Gerard noticed George's reaction. Giles turned away, taking off his glasses, fidgeting with them, his head bent. Willow went absolutely white – so white Gerard thought she was going to faint, but she stood still.

"Decimation has been on the books for years as a penalty, but this is the first time to my knowledge that Commerce has ordered it. The first time for this large a group - we would have heard about this if it had happened before. I didn't know Commerce was going to order it: no one could have known." Gerard rubbed his face with the back of his hand. "I don't know when they'll carry it out. It will take some time physically to arrange the disposal of the bodies. I would guess not before Wednesday."

"Three days minimum, assuming they work a twelve-hour day," Adam said. "Unless you have processing facilities ready set up, and they don't, it takes time to kill that many people and dispose of the bodies."

Willow swallowed. She said, in a strained, polite voice, "Excuse me," and went past Gerard out of the room: into the downstairs bathroom. The bolt slammed shut. They could all hear the violent retching noise that followed.

Giles looked at Adam. Gerard ignored them both, went to the kitchen, picked up what he wanted, and came back. George, Adam, and Giles were standing in a semi-circle round the bathroom door, looking at each other.

"We tried knocking," Giles said, as Gerard brushed past him.

"How do you plan on getting her to open the door?" George asked, with genuine interest.

"I’ll get Dana," Adam said.

Gerard ignored them. He set down what he was carrying, put his right hand on the door below the knob, just where the bolt was on the other side, and his left hand on the doorknob itself. Turn the knob sharply and literally lift the door by the friction of the painted wood against his hand: the bolt on the other side fell off its hook, and the door opened. Gerard would not normally have made so clear to his kids that there wasn't a door in his house that could be bolted against him, but right now he didn’t care.

He picked up bottle and loaf and was inside. He bolted the door again: it would take them more than five minutes to figure out the trick of opening it. There was a shelf for oddments inside: he put bottle and loaf down again before he dropped them or put them down somewhere fouled.

Willow was collapsed over the toilet pedestal, head down. She was alive; her soughing breath was loud in the quiet room. The air smelled sour.

Gerard picked her up and put her down against the far wall: she wasn't limp, but she didn't struggle. There was everything back to yesterday's breakfast in the toilet, but no sign of any blood or shit in the vomit, and as far as Gerard could tell, it smelled normal. Gerard put the lid down and flushed: the smell didn't go away, but it started getting better.

Willow was staring at him, her face fouled and tearful. Gerard unrolled toilet paper, wetted it at the sink, crouched down, and wiped the worst of the mess off her face. He put the paper down the toilet, flushed again, and filled the toothglass at the sink. "Can you get up, bambina?" He picked her up on the question, lifted the glass to her mouth. "Don't swallow, just swill it round and spit." He lifted the toilet lid again to let her spit where it could be flushed. "Okay. Again." He put her down against the far wall: she was beginning to feel like a human being in his hands, not a haeftling.

This time he wetted the handtowel, and let her mop her own face with it. He tore a piece off the loaf, a mouthful. "Eat that. Chew, swallow. Go on, it's just bread."

The handtowel got dumped in the bin the cleaners had put in after Dana started working there: Gerard never normally looked in it.

"I'm sorry," Willow said, raw with pain, through a second mouthful of bread.

"Shut up," Gerard said. "Chew, swallow. Good." He wiped off the rim of the toothglass and poured a short finger of brandy into it. "Drink this. You got nothing to be sorry about, Willow. Drink it." He held it to her mouth, tilted the cup, and she gulped the mouthful as if it were water, which she might have been expecting, and she gasped and choked as the burn hit. "Okay." He handed her another piece of bread, larger. "Eat that, bambina, it's an order."

He sat down on the pedestal, leaning forward, and watched Willow. She had colour back in her face and her breathing sounded normal: it was temporary but she was good to listen to him.

"We all did that, you know."

Willow stared at him. The piece of bread was in her hand, against her mouth: her jaws still moved.

"I passed that report on to Commerce. I knew they'd take action, I didn't know it was going to be like this, but I knew when I did it that some slaves were going to die and a lot more were going to suffer. I decided to do that. Not you. You did what I told you to do. No, I'm not going to tell you it was not your fault, Willow, because – " Because you wouldn't believe me " – but I am telling you: we all did it. Adam and you, and George, and me – and even Dana, for making our medical details convincing. You're the only one who threw up. The rest of us, we've all had times when – all you can do is unload your stomach – but we're all a lot older than you are. It doesn't say anything bad or good about you, it just says your stomach's not hardened to this."

"Two... thousand..." Willow said it jerkily, around the bread. "How can you...?"

"Time," Gerard said. "It's been years since I threw up like that." He smiled, though it was hardly funny. "Kid, it's decades."

"Tell me about your first time," Willow said.

"What?" Gerard heard himself snap the word into three syllables, like a whip: but Willow didn't flinch. She pushed the last of the bread into her mouth.

"What made you throw up like I did?"

Gerard poured another short finger of brandy. "Let me tell you what's going to happen when you get this down you." He handed Willow the toothglass. "You're going to drink this. You're going to have one more piece of bread. You're going to lie down upstairs, and if you’re not out cold in ten minutes Dana’s going to give you a sedative. Got it?"

"I'll drink it if you tell me about your first time," Willow said. She didn't sound too steady: the burn of booze on an emptied stomach gave the recipient a floating feeling.

"Drink it," Gerard said, and watched her raise the glass to her mouth. "My first time? Jesus Christ. I can't tell a kid like you a story like that."

"I k-killed two thousand people," Willow said. "I'm not a kid... anymore."

"I was twenty," Gerard said. "I was about to head off for my first tour of duty. There was one kid, he'd borrowed his father's bodyslave. We were all real drunk. One of my friends, big kid, same age as me but tall and pretty damn strong, he got the bodyslave down and he started whaling away on his ass with his hands. He kept saying he was going to make it good, he knew how. The bodyslave was howling, but you could tell – I could tell – he was making it sound like he was hurting, but it wasn't nothing." Gerard folded his hands across his knees. "Then my pal got mad, because we could all tell the howling was just acting, we were all laughing. And he unshipped his belt and he got me to kneel on the man's shoulders and he went to work on the man's back. And pretty soon the noise wasn't acting, not at all." Gerard stopped. He looked at Willow. "I don't know if you're old enough to hear this, Will, but you ever feel something, really strong, really want something, and know you're a complete piece of shit for wanting it? That was me, right then. And I got up off the guy and went to the bathroom and I threw up everything back to breakfast. I haven't thrown up like that since. You get casehardened. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just something that happens. Okay, Will, eat one more mouthful of bread and we're getting out of here."

"I don't think I can get up," Willow said.

"Yeah," Gerard said. He took away the toothglass and put it up on the shelf beside the bottle. "Eat the bread, kid. Bite down, chew, swallow. Good. Gonna tell you one more thing, Will, because you're going to be out like a light by the time you get upstairs: you don’t have to do this again. I promise. When you wake up you're gonna have a square meal or three and you're going home, and you're not going to do any work for a week, and you don’t have to do this again. Got it?"

The bread seemed to have been swallowed. Willow's head was lolling back, and she was swaying. Gerard stood up and lifted Willow to her feet, putting his arm round her to hold her against him, and opening the door. Willow was barely conscious enough to be walked to the stairs: Gerard ignored both men hovering and got her there. Upstairs was trickier: she kept falling over. Gerard dumped her on the bed, propped up pillows behind her, dropped a blanket over her, watched her literally fall sleep as he stood up, and left the room, coming face to face with Giles, who had his glasses off.

“Good, you can sit with her,” Gerard said. “Call me and Dana when she wakes up, got it?”

“Did you just get Willow drunk?”

“Yeah,” Gerard nodded. “If you got a better fix, you can do it when she wakes up. I told her she could go home, I told her she was off work for a week, I told her she never had to do anything like this again. You can take her home once she’s woken up, isn’t throwing up, and she’s had something to eat. Stay with her until I call you in.”

Giles opened his mouth. Gerard shook his head. “Put your glasses back on, we’re not going to have a fight over this. Did Adam get Dana?”

“Yes, she’s downstairs…” Giles did put his glasses on, settling them on his nose, looking at Gerard. “Shouldn’t you have waited for her?”

Gerard shook his head again. He thought of saying Next time I’ll do it better. He didn’t say it. “Anything you need, call,” and went downstairs.

He told Dana. Her face went white, too, but she didn’t throw up. After a while, she asked how much alcohol he’d given Willow, and went upstairs to check on her: when she came back, she and Adam went back to the clinic on the other side of the house.

Gerard sat down and looked at George. “I’m not going to say this again,” he said. “If you hadn’t got that report edited, it could have been every site at that company decimated, not just one.”

George didn’t answer. He had a number of files open. “We still need to get these done.”

“Yeah. Can you run the numbers using Willow’s algorithms?”

“I can try,” George said, after a moment. “You think we can’t use Willow again.”

“Maybe not.” Gerard said. “If we can’t, if she’s permanently cracked, she goes with the next foreign delivery. Her and Giles, we can’t keep him without her.”

George nodded. After a moment, not looking at Gerard, he said “I suppose the principle that two hundred thousand is a bigger number than two thousand ought to help.”

“But it doesn’t,” Gerard said.

George’s face was dry and focussed, and his voice had lost all affect: he sounded as if he wanted to kill someone. “No. It doesn’t.” After a moment, he did look at Gerard. “And whatever it was you were doing to Richard, earlier… did that help?”

Gerard shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for that. He still had to tell Ray and Benton.

When an e-mail arrived from Devlin-McGregor, at first Gerard assumed it must be arrangements about the killing – or thanks or complaint, if Commerce had told them where the report of their “situation” came from. He read it twice before he understood it wasn’t.

“Someone else wants to buy Richard?”

“What?” George looked up.

“I just had an offer,” Gerard said. “From a pharmaceutical company. To buy the contract of the slave I’m holding for a Final destination.” Gerard looked at the figure in the e-mail. “It’s higher than the offer I got from Doctor Nicholls last week.”

“Well,” George said. He looked back at the files, briefly, and then at Gerard. “Another rescue attempt?”

Gerard shrugged. “Probably. Doctor Kimble seems to have been a popular kind of guy.”

“Why not just let them have him?”

There was a pause. George went on looking at Gerard, eyebrows raised. Gerard shrugged again. “If I get rid of him, I just have to begin again with some other guy. I’d probably have the same kind of problems with any convict. Richard’ll learn.”

“He hasn’t yet, then.”

“He will,” Gerard said. He was reasonably confident about this: Richard was stubborn, but he couldn’t hold out forever.

In the hall, they heard Benton and Ray coming in. Gerard felt a cold weight settling on him. Time to go.

end of “The Gambler”

The next section begins once I’m finished writing for Yuletide. *tears hair* Send good thoughts!

The Gambler - Part Six

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:46:09 GMT

This is the sixth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part, fifth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Seven, the last part of "The Gambler", is now complete and will be posted tomorrow. The next story is "The Pieces", another ensemble section, and the last story is "End Game", plus a couple of possible stand-alones in which neither Richard Kimble nor Sam Gerard appear. But I really need to stop writing this in order to write my Yuletide story, so I'm resolved: I won't start on "The Pieces" till I'm done with Yuletide, at least to first draft.

Part Six

When the door opened, Richard was standing by the wall below the window, his hands resting on the wall: he might have been leaning his face against it, but he turned quickly when he heard the door open.

“We’re going to have something to eat,” Gerard said. “Come here.”

Richard leant back against the wall. “I’m not hungry.”

“Did I ask you? Come here.”

Richard sat down. He folded his arms over his knees and his head bent down. He didn’t move.

Gerard was tired and angry enough that he didn’t feel any real hunger himself: he knew if he ate nothing now, he’d wake with a bellyache about five in the morning. He wanted to make sure Richard was fed.

“Richard,” Gerard said. He put a crack of command into it, and saw Richard twitch: not quite a move to get up, but nearly.

“What do you imagine I’m gonna do, Richard?” Gerard leaned against the open door. “Shut you in here because you’ve decided you want to play prisoner? Come over there and kick the shit out of you? It’s late, I’m tired, I’m gonna put a couple of sandwiches together for both of us and you can come right back here if you like, but if you sit there like that for even thirty more seconds I am putting you in cuffs and leg-irons and you are spending the night on the floor of my room. Got it?”

It was an unplanned threat, but Richard reacted to it: he lifted his head, looked at Gerard, and – within the half-minute – he was standing on his feet, swaying a little, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Come here,” Gerard repeated, and Richard walked towards him. His face wasn’t passive any more. He looked angry. Maybe that was what he was trying to hide. Slaves weren’t supposed to be angry.

It made a good-looking change from passive. Gerard put his hand on Richard’s shoulder and steered him down the stairs. Richard kept his hands in his pockets; Gerard let him till they were all but at the kitchen door. The pager had been shoved down into the right-hand front pocket: Gerard took it away from him and pocketed it, before he made Richard sit in the chair with its back to the door, from which Richard couldn’t get up in a hurry without making some noise.

Gerard put together two cold meat sandwiches, layered with tomato, and left them on the counter while he checked out the pager. Richard had tried to use it to page two or three numbers, all of which would have to be checked against the ones Richard had tried the previous week, but then seemed to have spent at least some time on trying to crack the security code.

“Next time, don’t even try,” Gerard told Richard, pocketing the pager again. “Waste of your time.”

“And you keep me so busy,” Richard said, and seemed to choke, or sob: a deep gutteral noise, that might even have been a laugh.

Gerard sat down and pushed the plate at Richard, taking one himself. “Go on.” He waited until Richard had the sandwich in his hands. “You know, there’s goddam little you can do around here, and there’s even less I can trust you to do around here after the stunt you pulled last week.”

Richard stared at him for a moment, and then took a grim bite of the sandwich he was holding. Gerard nodded, and began to eat. For once, they both finished at almost the same time: Richard must have been hungry, for all his claims not to be.

“The runaways,” Richard said. “Did you catch them?”

“Yes, we did,” Gerard said.

“And they’re here,” Richard said. Not a question, this time. “You’re going to interrogate them. Find out who helped them.” He still sounded angry.

“That’s none of your business,” Gerard said, keeping his voice dead level. He stood up. “We’re going to bed now. So, where do you want to spend the night?”

Richard stared up at him. “Why do you ask?”

Gerard put his hand on the back of Richard’s neck, feeling collar and skin against his palm. “You’ve got a choice,” he said. He was finding Richard more attractive right now than he’d found him in a week of passive silence and invisible resistance. “I told you.”

Not like a window or like a mask,but with a kind of slow resignation, Richard’s face changed. His voice wasn’t angry, any more: it wasn’t anything. “With you, Sam.”

“The hell,” Gerard said briefly, and urged Richard to his feet. “Upstairs.”

The improvised sleeping mat and blanket was still in Gerard’s bedroom. Gerard let Richard use the bathroom, and handed him the bundle of blankets and comforter.

Richard stood still, ignoring Gerard’s touch pointing him at the door, “Why do you ask,” he said, not angrily as before: tired and flat. “Whatever I say…”

“I pay attention,” said Gerard. “Go on.” He did not trust this kind of resignation in Richard – that anger had been genuine – and he was tired and angry enough not to trust himself. There were four scared kids in cells on the other side of the house, without blankets or anything to drink or eat.

The three numbers Richard had tried to page were two doctors, Nicholls and Wahlund, and the third number also belonged to Chicago Memorial hospital, though the current holder wasn’t anyone Richard could have known.

Richard spent Sunday for the most part with earphones on the sofa in the lounge, ignored by Giles and Adam when they were there: they spent some time over on the other side of the house, and Gerard put Richard back in the holding cell while they made their report.

The two slaves were numb with terror, and it was impossible for either Giles or Adam to get much useful information out of them. They were fully expecting to be killed, of course: slaves knew nothing good happened to runaways.

The Forrester kid was still angry even after twelve hours: and the Channing kid cracked like an egg.

“She found out Tam and Bo were seeing each other,” Adam said. “She thought it was all very romantic, She wanted to help them get away. She talked Stephanie into letting them use her house as a first stop, thinking it was far enough away they wouldn’t be searched for there, and then arranged to go away and not take Tam with her.”

“Ridge Forrester is marked down as an abolitionist by Commerce. Someone who didn’t like him much put his name on the list. Could have been any one of his three ex-wives,” Gerard said, with some grim humour. “Or this would likely never have come to our attention.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“I want to get Willow to run the numbers for us,” Gerard said, without answering the question. “Add it up.”

Gerard's office on the safe side had a window on to the garden. When he was doing the administrative work, Gerard never looked out: his desk faced a wall.

The phone rang: it was the admin office in Commerce.

"We'd like to congratulate you on your extraction of the five subjects you were sent last week," the cool voice said.

Gerard had never met any of them. They always spoke in the plural. He had been expecting this call today.

"Thank you very much," Gerard said. He went on listening, looking out of the window at the wired wall and the grey grass.

"My team did good work," Gerard said finally. "We could do better, if next time, we get subjects that haven't been so damaged. Especially in the mouth."

There was a pause. The cool voice said "We find it best to ensure other resources are aware of the severity of the consequences involved. Your methods are very effective, Mr Gerard, but in effect a subject sent to you simply disappears: there is no ...sensory impact."

"I appreciate that," Gerard said. "But you understand, the quality of the information we can provide is dependent on the quality of the subjects you provide."

"We are very impressed with the quality of your work even subject to those restrictions. We have passed on our recommendations to Devlin-MacGregor, based on the situation discovered by your report."

"Thank you very much," Gerard said again. He reached out a hand to the cool glass of the window, leaned against it. "Can I ask what your recommendation was?"

"Decimation of the labour at the contaminated site," the voice from Commerce said. "We saw the need to send a strong message."

"I appreciate that," Gerard said. "That site is twenty thousand slaves, isn't it? More or less."

"That's correct, Mr Gerard. We feel that the loss of two thousand resources falls within acceptable limits. Agents of Commerce will of course be on hand to see the lossage is carried out humanely."

Gerard sat down at his desk. A file was open on his computer screen: it was something about running costs. In one empty field, he entered the figures for two million. "Well, that'll send a message," he said. In the next, the figures for twenty thousand. "Do you suppose this company, Devlin-Macgregor, will want to follow through?"Under the first field, he entered the formula to calculate 10%, and copied it into the next field. "It's a pretty extravagant message. They're a robust company. Of course I appreciate the significance of our information, but with two thousand slaves you run the risk of taking out some valuable properties." In another field, he entered the formula to subtract one result from the other.

"I am sure that Devlin-MacGregor will ensure that the less valuable slaves will be predominantly chosen," the voice from Commerce said. "We shall strongly recommend that they resolve the situation. We wish to thank you for the report which drew our attention to the risks inherent in this situation."

"Yeah," Gerard said, "My team do good work. Glad to hear you appreciate the information we provide."

The conversation was really over: they exchanged a few more compliments, and Gerard set the phone down. He sat still, staring at the figures on the screen, feeling cold in his stomach, a little breathless. He glanced at his watch: it was half past eleven. He closed the file, without saving the data he had just entered.

Downstairs, over the other side of the house, George, Willow, Adam and Giles were all in the lounge, all working. Dana was running medical tests in the clinic, figuring out the death reports for the four prisoners; they’d need two at least, and she might as well do all four while Willow was running the numbers. Gerard had meant to let Richard out for lunch: the work he had to do this afternoon he could do at his desk in the lounge. He hadn’t slept with Richard last night, either.

Richard was sitting on the floor, his hands fallen between his knees, his head back against the wall. He was looking at the door when Gerard came in.

Gerard closed the door behind himself, with a solid thump. Richard looked startled. He didn't get up, but his hands shifted, as if he were thinking about it.

"Don't move," Gerard said. He came over. Nothing much was clear to him that he wanted, but he could have this. "Shift your ass, I want to sit down behind you."

He sat down, leaned back against the wall, and put his arms round Richard. There was no more than an instant's unwilled resistance: Richard leaned back, his head against Gerard's shoulder, instead of the wall.

Holding Richard like this, Gerard could feel the bones of his shoulders digging in: each breath he took, like warmth inside him: the beating of his heart. His whole and solid body, alive, unharmed.

"Do you know the difference between twenty thousand and two hundred thousand?"

Richard's voice sounded creaky. "One hundred and eighty thousand."

"One number is a lot bigger than the other," Gerard said. "But they're both very big numbers. Aren't they?"

"I suppose so."

"I don't have an answer for you," Gerard said. "It ought to make a difference that one number's a lot bigger. I guess it does. It really does." He tightened his grip on Richard.

"It usually does," Richard said. He tilted his head to look at Gerard. Gerard turned his head away.

"The thing is..." Gerard said, and his voice trailed off.

Telling the kids about the situation was something that couldn't be helped. It seemed unlikely that Commerce would manage to keep it entirely out of the news.

Or even if they did: Willow, of all his kids, would find out anyway.

"Sam, are you all right?"

"Fine," Gerard said. He felt distantly startled. "I'm good. How about you?"

"I'm good," Richard said.

"That's fine. I'm just going to sit here and hold you, okay? I'm not going to hurt you. Not at all."

tbc

The Gambler – Part Five

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:08:30 GMT

This is the fourth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Five

Giles delivered Willow on his way to DeKalb. When presented with earphones, plugged into the TV’s sound, Richard had taken them. He was sitting in the chair furthest from the door, and he hadn’t moved, though Gerard wasn’t sure he was watching the screen: watching them both, Willow’s face looked more surprised than Richard’s.

She didn’t ask any questions, though: Giles would have, and they might have been Willow’s. Gerard had not fathomed the relationship the two of them had.

Gerard had already pulled out the obviously useful information, and sent it to Adam and Giles: photographs, names, what had been reported stolen by the Channing household – if they had run. The state police had roadblocks up, and neither slave was reported able to drive: they had both been sold in childhood.

“Okay, there’s four possibilities as I see it,” Gerard said. “They’re runaways; their owner helped them escape; they were stolen; they’re a covert sale reported stolen; they’ve been killed, and the owners decided reporting them as runaways would save trouble.”

“Would they do that?” Willow said. She bit her lip. “I don’t mean would they: I mean why would they think it would save them trouble?” She glanced over at Richard. “Can he hear us?” It was her first question about Richard.

“No,” Gerard said. The earphones were seated: Richard had no control over the TV’s sound: unless he could remove them surreptiously, he was listening to British dialogue from a decades-old TV show. “He won’t be fetching coffee for us, though. They’d have to be idiots to think reporting a death’s less trouble than reporting a runaway. Commerce fines for a death, they’ll prosecute for a fake report.” And verdicts where Commerce was the plaintiff had a tradition of ending up with the loser enslaved. “But Commerce knew about this for three hours before they called us, so they think it’s a runaway or a theft. Might not be, though. What are the other choices? What are Adam and Giles needing to look for?”

“Well…” Willow swallowed, and looked away from Richard, back at her computer screen. Her face changed: she was thinking. “They were bought for the daughter?”

“Tam was. Bo was kitchen staff.” Tam had been bought as a companion for the only daughter, Emma: she was away from home this week: if the runaways weren’t caught by the time she came back, she’d face interrogation. Not by Gerard, or Commerce, not unless there was evidence of complicity. Some at least. It was going to be quite a shock for her. If she hadn’t instigated it, and even if she had, if she’d thought she could get away with it.

The first DVD ran out: Gerard switched it over for the next, and fetched Willow coffee. He worked on the Commerce files: sixty-three cases that linked to Northern Illinois from other US Marshal districts. George and he would compare notes on Monday. Richard never moved. The second time Gerard changed DVDs he did so without thinking Richard was watching: he was sitting back in the chair, almost curled in it, with his eyes closed. But it prevented him hearing any injudicious remarks, even though he and Willow could work together like this without saying anything out loud. Willow was sending Adam and Giles targeted packets of information: Giles was with the police in Sterling, fifty-five miles away and the furthest from DeKalb the slave Tam had ever been. Adam was still at the house working his way through the staff.

It occurred to Gerard about halfway through the evening that he was hungry and that Willow needed to eat, and that Richard had to be hungry too.

Richard reacted slowly when Gerard took the earphones out: he didn’t answer when Gerard asked him if he was hungry. He had been sitting in the chair for a long time – hours, since two o’clock – and he hadn’t moved or said a word. He went with Gerard to the kitchen, and sat down as Gerard directed, and then when Gerard looked round again, a box of stew defrosting in the microwave, Richard had folded his arms on the table and put his head down on to his arms.

“Richard,” Gerard said.

Richard didn’t move for a long instant. When he lifted his head and looked at Gerard, his face was passive. He said nothing.

“Come here.”

Richard stood up. He was still moving awkwardly, as if sitting still so long had cramped his muscles. He got to within arm’s reach of Gerard and stopped.

“How’s your ears?”

“Fine,” Richard said, toneless. He stared at Gerard. “Can you shut me in the cell?”

In your room? Gerard shook his head, without correcting Richard. “You need to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You still need to eat,” Gerard told him. It was hard not to feel sorry for him: even given Richard’s attempts to communicate with the outside world were good enough reason why he shouldn’t be allowed access to the cell without permission and a search. “No.”

Gerard’s phone rang: Giles. As often with young runaways, the case had come to an end without a climax: Tam and Bo were hiding – or being hidden – in the attic of a friend of Emma’s, who lived near Sterling. Giles was supervising their loading into the back of an armoured van: he was trying to hold off the local representative of Commerce.

“Good work,” Gerard told him briefly. “Just get them over here.”

“They want to take the daughter, too.”

“Okay, I’ll see to that.”

“Sam, I think she did have something to do with it.”

“Yeah?” Gerard tapped his hand against his thigh. “Get those two into the van and get them over here. I’ll call Adam. What’s Commerce doing with the family where they were hiding?”

“They’ve all been arrested. There are three other children, besides the one Commerce wants, two of them under-age.”

“Yeah. The police have them?”

“Yes, and I’ve called the social workers in. Commerce only wants the oldest girl.”

“Okay, don’t let them have her. I can get her out of a police cell, let the police have her. Make sure none of them get to talk to each other. Gag them if you have to. We need their stories clean. Do whatever you have to do, I want the three of them here.”

There were six holding cells on the other side of the house. So far, they had never all been in use.

Gerard called Adam: he was on it. Willow had sent him Emma’s location. Gerard shut the phone up – he would need to talk to Commerce and the local police soon, but it was time for Richard to get his wish.

“You’re going in your room,” Gerard said.

Richard was staring, hands by his sides, twitching a little. “You’re going to interrogate – ” His voice had risen.

“I’m going to do my job,” Gerard overrode him. “Get upstairs.” When Richard didn’t move, Gerard took him by the arm and walked him to the stairs. He felt Richard’s muscles twitch as if he was thinking of resistance, and jerked his arm up behind his back. “Don’t give me any shit, Richard, I mean it.”

Gerard patted Richard down before he pushed him through the door, and threw the code-locked pager at Richard: he’d set it up days earlier. Richard caught it and looked at it, visibly surprised.

“There won’t be anyone in the house,” Gerard said. “If you have an emergency, page me. I’ll come or I’ll send someone. That won’t work for anyone’s number but mine, so don’t even think it. And if it’s not an emergency, whoever gets here is going to beat six kinds of crap out of you for wasting our time.” He shut the door on Richard, and ran down the stairs: Willow was waiting in the hall. No one in the Channing household had yet been arrested, and Willow had a stack of reasons why, beginning with an application in process to make Emma’s father Lord Kevin. She followed him through to the armoury, listing them.

“Need you to stay here,” Gerard said, once he was armed. “If you hear Richard – ” it would have to be a real scream to penetrate the walls of the holding cell “ – you call me. Don’t open the cell door no matter what you hear. I need you to check these files in Commerce – ”

He began to list them, and Willow was paying attention, following Gerard to the door. “I can do that.”

“I know you can,” Gerard said. “Don’t go near the holding cell.” It was beginning to rain outside. He ran for his car.

They came back with two cars, one van, and four prisoners: Adam had gone to collect the girl Emma, but had swiped all the data from the household’s computers before he left. The two runaways were in the back of the van, separately hooded and cuffed: Giles looked more than a little tight-mouthed over that, but he’d done his job properly. Gerard had the other free girl, Emma’s friend, who probably knew nothing useful, cuffed in the back of his car. He still wasn’t sure what her name was: the family were Forrester, but her name was either Steffy or Stephanie. Giles’ car was still parked in DeKalb and would need to be collected at some point.

Commerce had got more worked up than the situation on the face of it justified: four teenagers who’d embarked on what might have looked like a big adventure. The fugitives department might still be twitching over the Devlin-MacGregor thing.

Adam was twenty minutes behind them on the road: between them he and Giles got the Forrester girl out of the car, into the house, and into one of the three holding cells in that row, the far one, so they wouldn’t have to pass her door when they brought Emma in. She struggled as far as someone in cuffs could struggle: she protested with outrage: she demanded to know where she was and to call a lawyer: but, Gerard noticed, the confusion and anger was not mixed with surprise: she knew what she’d done, she hadn’t expected to pay this penalty.

The two slaves were easier; they didn’t fight or ask questions. They went in the other row of holding cells, separated by one.

The last girl went into the cell Richard had been in. Closing the door on her, Gerard was conscious of real relief: it wasn’t over, but the worst that could happen now was they’d have to find four separate places to disappear these four kids.

“We’ll leave them all there for twelve hours to stew,” Gerard said. “I’m going to call Fugitives from the office.” He meant the one upstairs on this side of the house. “I’m still going to want you both tomorrow morning, but you can go home now.”

Adam glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. “Thanks.”

“Bring doughnuts,” Gerard added, and, to Giles, “Leave Willow at home. She’s done enough for a week.”

Emma Channing’s parents had already complained to Commerce, they let Gerard know: Stephanie Forrester’s parents were being investigated by the police, but Commerce had found no evidence of regular harbouring when they searched the house.

Gerard let the cool voice finish.

“Your local agents intended to arrest both Emma Channing and Stephanie Forrester,” he said. “I was told I would get the fugitives, but I wanted all four. We’ll juice them for you. I’ll instruct my team to go careful on the minors. You’ll want to return them to their parents if it turns out they’re innocent.”

“Do you suspect some kind of conspiracy?” The voice at the other end could not sound angry, or suspicious – these emotions had been drilled out of Commerce staff: but either there was some kind of suspicion hovering over the Forresters, or someone was very mad at that family. A minor child of a wealthy family wouldn’t normally end up being taken by Commerce for what a sympathetic interpreter could have decided was the informal loan of two slaves from one household to another by someone with no right to lend them.

“I have no idea,” Gerard said. “We’ll find out for you. Thank you. Good night.”

He put the phone down. It was necessary to put the four kids out of his mind: he’d have Giles and Adam interrogate them, and Willow could run the numbers and put the final touches to the report they’d send about them on Monday. He didn’t think either the Forresters or the Channings were connected to any network. They might not have to turn their daughters in. The two other kids, Tam and Bo: Dana would have to work out how they died. Gerard planned never, if possible, to see any of the four kids again. Certainly none of them should get to see him.

The other side of the house was empty: Gerard shut down his laptop in the lounge before he went upstairs to get Richard out of the holding cell.

tbc

The Gambler - Part Four

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:57:44 GMT

This is the fourth part of the third story (first part, second part, third part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. It is being written as part of wrimowrimo. I also updated the cast list here.

Part Four

George walked into the kitchen, eyed Richard, and switched the kettle on. “Good afternoon,” he said.

They were still eating lunch – or Richard was moving food around his plate, and Gerard was nursing a second mug of coffee. “Hey,” Gerard said, equably. “Aren’t you early?” He squinted at this watch. “No. we’re late.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Put him in his room,” Gerard said. He glanced at Richard. “Soon as he’s finished what he’s got on his plate.”

George made himself a mug of tea. He sat down at the table. He said nothing, and said it with visible disapproval and impatience.

Gerard grinned, amused. “Eat up, Richard.”

Richard put his fork down. “I’m not hungry,” he said, almost steadily, and looked across the table to meet Gerard’s eyes.

“I don’t care. Just eat the damn food,” Gerard said. He was startled and annoyed when George laughed, even if he could see what George was amused by.

“It’s a problem, isn’t it?” George said, to Gerard. “How do you punish him? Force feeding?” He glanced at Richard. “Don’t get too complacent,” he added. Sometimes his voice could go completely flat, affectless: it was like that now. “Sam might not want you dead, but I’d have killed you. I still may.”

Richard’s eyes flickered to George, and back to Gerard. His hands had dropped from the table.

Gerard stood up and went round the table, giving George a tap on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said to Richard. “Don’t panic, nobody’s going to kill you.”

After a moment, Richard stood up, and Gerard caught hold of his wrist: his pulse was racing.

They went upstairs: at the door of the holding cell, Gerard patted Richard down. There was nothing in any of the pockets of his jeans, nothing held beneath clothing. “Okay. We’ll be done in an hour or two. Probably. In you go.”

“Sam,” Richard said.

“What?”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“You won’t be allowed out of this room unsupervised,” Gerard said. “And you won’t be able to take anything in here with you again. You got that?”

Richard nodded.

“No one is going to kill you,” Gerard repeated. “You got most of my kids mad at you, but not that mad.”

Richard nodded again: his mouth worked. “I didn’t – ”

“Richard, we know what you did,” Gerard cut across him. “We know what websites you looked at, what pages you looked at, and how long you looked at them. We know whose laptops you used. We know what phone calls you made, and who to. We know whose phones you used. We know it, Richard.” He closed the door.

Downstairs, George hadn’t even finished his first mug of tea. He eyed Gerard thoughtfully as the other man sat down: he had a look of ironic amusement.

Gerard picked up his coffee. He eyed George back.

“Did he panic?” George inquired. He sounded interested.

“No,” Gerard said. “Not quite.” He drank coffee. He wanted to set Richard aside. “George – last night. When did you know that Richard had access – that he was the leak?”

George set both his hands together in front of him. He met Gerard’s eyes. His voice was dry and firm. “I set about looking at the records after you sent the revised report to Commerce. The first anomaly I noticed was on Doctor Scully’s phone: intensive use, Thursday afternoon, at a time when Dana had been supposedly at work in the clinic. When I remembered that at some time on Thursday Richard had voluntarily shut himself up in the holding cell and stayed there until you sent Benton to get him out, and when I checked the numbers and found that the last number called from Dana’s phone was that of Charles Nicholls, then I knew Richard was the most obvious source of the leak to Doctor Nicholls. The rest…” George shrugged. “Richard was enterprising. You’ll want to discourage that, if you keep him.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“It only became a significant concern when I realised how much access to the outside world Richard had taken. Even then, the risks of stopping the flight were clearly higher than the odds that Richard was a very well-buried mole. I’d looked up his records quite thoroughly the Sunday after you bought him.”

Gerard leaned forward a little. “It wasn’t your job to decide that,” he said. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“It is my job to assess these risks,” George said, just as coldly.

“The decisions are mine.”

“Adam, Benton, and Ray were in the drop zone by the time I knew what Richard had been doing: we couldn’t communicate with them without risk. The foreign delivery was due. If Richard knew what we’d been doing and had told Commerce – and I remind you there was and is no evidence that he had – then all three of them were lost and our mission was fatally compromised. The only thing to do by the time I knew it was to wait for them to make their report, and to immobilise and secure Richard. It didn’t seem to make much difference what order we did it in. I didn’t tell you until we knew the three of them were safe, that’s all. It was no more than half an hour, I give you my word – from when I guessed it was Richard to when I told you.” George said it all coldly and evenly, apparently with complete indifference to Gerard’s reaction: but then he disarmed most of Gerard’s anger by leaning forward and saying, “Sam, I just didn’t see why you had to have that worry.”

George in full protective mode: Gerard’s smile was entirely internal. “Because that’s my job,” he said finally, leaning back again. “You know it is. You wouldn’t tolerate that either if you were in the hot seat. Half an hour now, a couple of hours next time, half a day after that? Don’t ever do that again. And don’t yell at my kids, either. Even if we are a bunch of bloody amateurs.”

George looked caught out: as embarrassed as he ever looked. “Ah,” he said. “I didn’t intend you to feel yourself included.”

“Why not?” Gerard did smile then. “Like I told Will. I’ve never done this before. And no one’s paying me to do it. You’re the only pro in this crowd.”

George nodded: embarrassed, amused, and caught playing protector. He finished his tea, set the cup down, and said “And with regard to the new cases?”

“Yeah, we should look through them. The files are all on the other side.” Gerard stood up, and grinned widely. “I’ll tell anyone who asks that’s what you came for.”

“No one will ask.”

George was gone in two hours. Richard had been lying flat on the floor of the holding cell, Gerard guessed, for at least part of the time; it wasn’t a quick position to rise from when Gerard came in.

“Relax,” Gerard said: “We’re going out for a walk.” He let Richard out ahead of him, and down the stairs: in the hall, Richard paused, looking back at him,

“Round the house,” Gerard said. “It’s not raining.”

Fresh air and exercise. If the armoury was locked down, and two people were willing to supervise, Richard could use the gym. If no one was working in the lounge, Richard could watch DVDs on the TV.

“We were real busy this past week,” Gerard said. “You should get to go out more. Remind me if I forget.” Giving Richard more than he needed in order to be able to take what he didn’t need away from him was the only way to punish him: that or kill him. And it certainly seemed like he were going to need ways to punish Richard.

Richard’s eyes went to the wired wall around the garden the moment he stepped outside: he looked at Gerard only after he took hold of Richard’s wrist.

The death the wall would give was the death Commerce would give its convict slaves. Gerard had warned Richard of it in explicit terms, to keep him away from the wall: but it seemed to fascinate Richard. Gerard didn’t think it was a rabbit fascinated by a snake: Richard was not prey. Gerard kept a firm grip on his wrist as they walked, twice, around the house.

“Sit down there,” Gerard said, pointing at the sofa. “Pick something you want to watch.”

Richard looked at him, He still didn’t speak, but his face could be very expressive, and what it was expressing was You’re kidding me.

“The hell,” Gerard said, answering the look. “Just do as you’re told, OK? And try speaking. I told you about that.”

“Yes, Sam,” Richard said, and sat down, leaning sideways to look at the shelf where Gerard kept the British DVDs.

Ordering a new mattress for the holding cell – and a sleeping mat, that could be rolled up and put away, for Gerard’s bedroom – took all of ten minutes. Richard had three DVDs on the table in front of him.

Two were from the British collection: Eddie Izzard, that was Giles, and All Creatures Great and Small, that was Adam. One was from the regular shelves: an approved remake of Casablanca that came out two years ago that someone had given him as a joke of sorts: Sam the piano player was Rick’s body slave.

Gerard picked up the last, staring at Richard, glancing down at the blurb on the back. Richard looked back at him, completely expressionless. If he’d done it on purpose, he wasn’t giving anything away. Impossible to prove, one way or another, without an interrogation as humiliating for Gerard as it would be agonising for Richard, over a damn DVD.

Not a game Gerard intended to play. He reshelved it and glanced at the other two: British comedy of the kind Giles liked, and some kind of show about a Yorkshire vet. “Okay. Put that on.”

He sat down on the sofa. When Richard had put the DVD in the player, Gerard patted the sofa beside him. “Sit down,” he said, as Richard hesitated.

Richard sat on the edge of the sofa; Gerard took hold of his arm and pulled him back, settling him to lean against his shoulder. “Get comfortable. Let’s watch this.” He had two hours to spare and there was no game on: this wouldn’t have been his choice of ways to spend them, but there were worse ones.

Richard, tense for a while, eventually relaxed: not all at once, but as if it was too difficult to keep holding himself rigidly still. The show wasn’t bad, either.

The phone rang just as a new episode was starting. “Yeah, this is Gerard.”

The voice was Commerce. “This is the department of fugitives, Mr Gerard.” They never identified themselves by name, only by office. “A household in DeKalb reports two slaves have absconded.”

“What?” Gerard let go of Richard and stood up.

“They went missing since midnight and eight o’clock this morning. We believe their collars may have been removed.”

The slaves could have been stolen – collars would be the first thing to go - or they could have got them removed themselves, if they knew how, thinking it would make it harder to track them.

“You have been informed as a courtesy. We do not believe we will require the assistance of the US Marshal’s service to retrieve the fugitives.”

“Send me over everything you’ve got on the household and the slaves. All of them,” Gerard said.

“Certainly, Mr Gerard. The fugitives will be rendered to you after capture.”

“Sure they will,” Gerard said out loud, after the connection was cut. Richard was staring up at him. There was no time. All his kids were on speed-dial from his phone.

“Adam,” Gerard said. “We got two runners. They started from DeKalb, they’ve had up to sixteen hours start. I want you and Giles to get out there. I want these two found, I want them here.”

He had the same conversation with Giles, and closed the connection, looking down at Richard. There had to be time to deal with this. The point of having a canary was to keep the canary visible: Richard was of no use kept in the holding cell. Gerard had been OK with that as a temporary measure when he thought it was keeping Richard calmed down. But long-term, it didn’t do. “Stay where you are,” Gerard said. He went back to his laptop.

The material on the household and on the slaves, with the files on the two who had run, had already been sent over in a set of large, indigestible, and locked files. Material information would have to be retrieved and sent to Giles and Adam: George was busy on the next set of Commerce files. Dana, Ray, and Benton were all due Saturday at least off if they were going to be functional, and Willow was going to be needed –

“Richard.”

Richard stood up, turning, staring, wide-eyed.

“I don’t want to lock you in your room for the next few hours, but I can put you in leg-irons where you are. Or if you sit where you are with earphones in and don’t say one goddamn word and don’t move, I don’t have to do that either.”

Richard’s voice was rusty and shaking. “I’d rather you locked me in my room.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t always get what you want, do you?” tbc